Hollie Hughes (NSW, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Climate Change and Energy) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Finance (Senator Gallagher) to questions without notice asked by Senators Payne, Chandler, Davey and Liddle today relating to taxation, the cost of living and health care.

We once again heard today from the government that they were going to make a modest change to superannuation. They didn't understand why everyone's knickers were getting in a twist, because it's a modest change. I thought, 'Well, we keep hearing this.' It's obviously being featured throughout the focus groups that they have been conducting on how to best sell these broken promises to the electorate, because before the election you didn't say 'modest change'. Mr Albanese said 'no change', very clearly.

So I had a look at what the word 'modest' means in the dictionary, because I thought it might be helpful for those opposite to understand that 'modest' means 'relatively small, moderate or limited'. Then, if you look up what 'no' means when you talk about 'no change to superannuation' or 'no change to franking credits', 'no' means 'not at all', 'not any' or 'to no extent'. So what we have from those opposite is a litany of broken promises, one after the other. The one on superannuation is attacking the retirement savings and investments of people who have made long-term strategies, and we now know it's going to impact not 0.5 per cent of Australians but 10 per cent of Australians, because the broken promises continue. They're also going to stop allowing companies from offering franking credits. We all remember the election when Chris Bowen said, 'If you don't like the policy, don't vote for us.'